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oxide7 writes "The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once famously said, 'That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.' That may or may not be true for human beings, but it is certainly true for bacteria. The superbugs are among us and they are not leaving. Indeed, they are growing stronger. 'The problem is that the animal agriculture industry makes massive use of low-dose antibiotics for growth promotion and in place of effective infection prevention methods,' Young said, adding that the farm animal population is much larger than the human population. The low-dose antibiotics do not kill the disease. They make the disease stronger, more resistant to those and other antibiotics. The animals — the cattle, pigs and chickens — thus treated become superbug factories. The diseases stay in them and they wash off them to infect the surrounding environment."

This is a perfect example of unintended consequences, where antibiotics cure human disease, but then the germs "fight back" and revive in a more deadly form which we don't know how to stop. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2100s experiences as much death from disease as people in the 1800s did.

Most of the resistance business is about penicillin derivatives, tetracyclines and vancomycin, all of which come from the 1950s or earlier.

Sure, misuse is making those antibiotics less effective at treating diseases, but the other half of the equation is that they have been so effective for 50 years that it hasn't been particularly worthwhile to pursue drugs that use different mechanisms of attack.

Rapid genome sequencing is changing that, expect all sorts of novel antibiotics over the next 20 years. Also expect to pay for them.

Most of the resistance business is about penicillin derivatives, tetracyclines and vancomycin, all of which come from the 1950s or earlier.

Your conclusion is missing a vital piece of data. Vancomycin is the last line of defense for antibiotic-resistant infections in humans. That is why doctors avoid using it -- because it is vitally important that the bugs never acquire a resistance to it.

I remember a few years ago, when the industrial-farming folks pushed through approval to use vanco in cattle feed. T

It's also a perfect example of stupidity. Human beings haven't really been around that long (in fact, according to some Morm^Hons, I was apparently born before the descent of Man), and evolves comparatively slowly.

Bacteria, on the other hand, can easily pick up scraps of extracellular DNA and incorporate it into their own, driving evolution effectively (i.e. where necessary) within a single generation of 15 minutes under optimal conditions. Bacteria might not be as smart as us (though I sometimes wonder), but their biochemistry can be seriously cool, and giving them the advantage in our food chain is just damn silly.

Incidentally, you mention death from disease in the 1800s: It seems to surprise many to be reminded that the Spanish Influenza pandemic (1918-1920) killed more people than the First ("Great") World War. It killed more people in a single year than the Bubonic Plague did in four, from 1347 to 1351.

>>>Spanish Influenza pandemic (1918) killed more people than the Bubonic Plague did in four, from 1347 to 1351.

It's all relative. The 1918 flu killed 3% of the population while the 1348 Black Death killed 45% of Europe and 20% of the world. If WE were hit by some disease with the same mortality as the 1348 bubonic, then 1400 million people would be dead. - Or if it had the same localized impact as it had in 1348, killing 45% of a continent, then 200 million North Americans would need to be buried

Indeed, and this is occasionally used to illustrate why the evolution/creation "debate" isn't just an intellectual exercise. Here in the US, the creationists have effectively suppressed the teaching of evolution in our school system (below the college level). The result is that most of the population, including the people running all those farms, have been intentionally kept ignorant of the evolutionary process. They don't understand

There was a story on/. here a few years ago about squirrels that look booth ways before crossing the road.

Yeah, I've seen them doing that. Of course, since their eyes are on the sides of their heads, it's pretty easy for them. But you can see them looking around for things in the street.

One of my favorite examples of short-term human-triggered evolution is in our lawn: Our neighborhood has mower-adapted dandelions. This has been reported in many cities, but rarely out in rural areas where mowers are muc

Evolution is an automated design process with a more complete specification than manual engineering. It also works on economies and societies, though to get results you want you have to add impedances; governments seem to instead want to add a complete set of impedances to precisely engineer a society, and of course this fails.

Some people still do. It's not something you can get at Walmart but if you live anywhere close to the country there is a good chance that:1) There are farmers markets around. The best and freshest produce and meat money can buy, and usually competitive on price.2) Some farmers let you just buy a side of a cow (or an entire cow). So for $x00 you can buy an entire cow. The farmer raises it, kills it and you can have a say in how it is butchered. This does require a deep freezer (unless you're going to throw one heck of a braai). Usually ends up cheaper than super market and you know exactly where your meat is coming from.

I (we) buy all of our food directly from farms. We live in a suburb of New York City, and still we have found farms not too far away.We buy a 1/4 cow (we split it with three other families) and it feeds us for a year. All of our produce comes from farms as well.Our beef and chicken is raised walking around eating grass and bugs and whatever it would naturally eat.

The food tastes better and is better for us.A month doesn't go by that I don't hear of some horrible contamination-caused food recall that doesn't affect me or my family.

Including chicken litter, which may include undigested chicken feed, which includes mammal tissues. Producers voluntarily stopped using chicken litter as cattle feed recently, but could go back to using it at any time.

Gawd, not this/i unimaginative debate again.... why can't a "Universal Awareness" (I dislike the word "God," to me it sounds so ass-backward and presumptuous) have used "evolution" to influence "design?"

Actually, in this case that's what people were talking about. Except the "design" wasn't done by a [Gg]od. It was done by a million local animal breeders over thousands of years, who started with a number of wild animals, and through selective breeding, produced the modern milk/egg/meat machines that give

So, an environmental engineer absentmindedly decided it was worth keeping the disease and getting rid of the stress? I'm not sure legislation will work very well on this. For example, you can't legislate that the hole in the ozone layer go away, it just doesn't work like that. I didn't read the article, but, the legislation actually has to work. Does it?

According to the National Office of Animal Health (NOAH, 2001), antibiotic growth promoters are used to "help growing animals digest their food more efficiently, get maximum benefit from it and allow them to develop into strong and healthy individuals". Although the mechanism underpinning their action is unclear, t is believed that the antibiotics suppress sensitive populations of bacteria in the intestines. It has been estimated that as much as 6 per cent of the net energy in the pig diet could be lost due to microbial fermentation in the intestine (Jensen, 1998). If the microbial population could be better controlled, it is possible that the lost energy could be diverted to growth.

Thomke & Elwinger (1998) hypothesize that cytokines released during the immune response may also stimulate the release of catabolic hormones, which would reduce muscle mass. Therefore a reduction in gastrointestinal infections would result in the subsequent increase in muscle weight. Whatever the mechanism of action, the result of the use of growth promoters is an improvement in daily growth rates between 1 and 10 per cent resulting in meat of a better quality, with less fat and increased protein content. There can be no doubt that growth promoters are effective; Prescott & Baggot (1993), however, sho ed that the effects of growth promoters were much more noticeable in sick animals and those housed in cramped, unhygienic conditions.

Currently, there is controversy surrounding the use of growth promoters for animals destined for meat production, as overuse of any antibiotic over a period of time may lead to the local bacterial populations becoming resistant to the antibiotic. This is it not an invariable rule: Streptococcus pyogenes remains sensitive to penicillins after over sixty years of clinical use but such examples are, however, very rare. Undoubtedly, the medical exploitation of antimicrobial chemotherapy, particularly to treat human infections, has imposed an enormous selection pressure on formerly sensitive bacteria to acquire genetic elements that code for resistance to antibiotics.

Fuck that. Take a few cigarettes, break off the filters and drop them into a bottle of water for about two or three days. Spray some of that water upon the bug of your choosing. Watch as the bug goes into a long, painful looking death spasm, imagining the agony as its body is poisoned. And what amazes me is that I use this mixture on some plants I grow in order to control mites, and I still smoke a pack or two a day.

Probably by supplementing their immune system so less energy is devoted to fighting or recovering from sickness and more can be directed into muscle growth. A sick animal isn't going to pack on weight like a "healthy" one. Just stressing some animals can weight loss.

Nobody knows for certain, but it does work. (If it didn't work, agribusiness wouldn't be spending so much money on it.)
It's probably that it's normal for animals to get bacterial infections, and while they are fighting them, they aren't eating and growing as much. If you can eliminate most of those infections, they will just grow without interruption, meaning they will grow bigger over the same time period.

Actually, while there are a lot of theories (some of which are discussed in other responses), no one really knows why. It's not really curing any disease... antibiotics make even healthy animals grow faster. So actual answer to your question is no, no one can really explain this.

Watch a documentary or two. Animals raised in an environment where they aren't exposed to typical bugs don't develop the same strong immune system as animals exposed to these things since birth. Imagine you were born in a box and lived your whole life in that box. After some time your immune system would become suppressed and you would need this stuff to survive.

This reminds me of a study I once read about (I think it was done in Germany) where they looked at the immune systems of children raised on farms

Can someone explain to me how giving animals antibiotics promotes growth of the animals?

Basically, they use them as a broad-spectrum prophylactic against things that might otherwise affect them and make them less productive/healthy animals.

Essentially to compensate for industrial farming practices which are more or less awful conditions (cows enclosed in a stall standing in their own shit for hours at a stretch) they inoculate them against everything. They're also feeding them stuff [usatoday.com] that [wordpress.com] would [allaboutfeed.net] make you cri

I mean, anyone who has not had their head stuck in the ground for the past 30 years should be well aware of the whole antibiotics/superbug issue. The only possible exceptions being the evolution deniers and, I bet even many of them have some twisted concept that reconciles their philosophy with superbugs.

However, I was reading that there is a new class of antibiotics in development, which are based on immune system antigens and, for some reason (anyone know more?) are thought to, because of their mechanism of action, not be susceptible to the same problem of evolving the bacteria to survive them.

I don't know if its true or how they work but, if the article I saw a while back is right, then, they could be useful here. Then again, this just seems like a bad idea overall.

actually We should "rest" antibiotic then the superbugs should loose their resistance. Since their will be no evolutionary pressure to maintain resistance it should reduce over time.Part of the problem is that we then start giving them to farm animals because they are cheap.

However, I was reading that there is a new class of antibiotics in development, which are based on immune system antigens and, for some reason (anyone know more?) are thought to, because of their mechanism of action, not be susceptible to the same problem of evolving the bacteria to survive them.

I liked what the Russians were working on for a while - Phages. More completely, Bacteriophages. Viruses for bacterias.

No chance of the virus crossing over to affect humans, and a bacterial colony already under assault by the human immune system isn't generally going to last long when it's also 'sick' with a virus. As a bonus, immunity doesn't really happen because the virus adapts right along with the bacteria.

The problem with phages is that they're the opposite of broad-spectrum antibiotics. They're very, very, specific. They'll clear a throat infection right up, but first you need a culture to determine which species of bacteria you have(there's millions/billions of them), then find an effective phage against it.

That can take a week, then you gotta get the phage to the clinic, as most don't have the room for the number of phage samples you'd need.

They believe in small scale evolution (the electricity), but they don't believe in large scale evolution where a single-cell organism has evolved into all the species that you see today. At least, not based on purely random mutation. It's kind of hard to repeat that in the lab.

Occasionally I get to drive by a huge corporate cattle ranch while on a trip; the animal's living conditions are deplorable. No shade in a hot arid climate, and hardly enough room to move around, they pack as many animals into a corral as possible. They stand all day in wet muddy shit, costs too much to provide land to roam and people to round them up.

In my opinion, this exemplifies what is wrong with unabashed Capitalism. Who cares what happens, just make us more money now, is a philosophy ultimately doomed to failure. Time to get smart.

Actually, it is not what is wrong with Capitalism. This is what is called an externality [wikipedia.org]. Basically a unaccounted for benefit or cost. The role of government is to see things like this that the market cannot account for and be sure to tax or regulate according to the cost.

It isn't terribly difficult. The problem is we have the right with their Pavlovian "Government is bad" chant, and the left which wants to micromanage. You then have the majority of the population which doesn't really understand economics and just listens to their favorite commentator think for them.

What? It's exactly what's wrong with capitalism. Hell, you pointed out the problem yourself! Negative externalities are *specifically* a fundamental flaw in pure capitalism, which is why it must be tempered with some level of government intervention.

Basically a unaccounted for benefit or cost. The role of government is to see things like this that the market cannot account for and be sure to tax or regulate according to the cost.

This is exactly the definition of "Unbridled" Capitalism (ie, free from the government "bridle). I agree with you that it's in the common interest that capitalism is regulated, and the government is the best tool for that job.

Our major problem isn't with the people who are brainwashed into "free markets == victory" mantra, but the brainwashers (ie, the corporate controlled media) and the money that pays everything and everyone to buy into that flawed concept.

The wealthy and corporate elite are the ultimate villains here, they will do what they did to other countries where they strip-mined the land, put the people into slave labor, in the name of pure profits.

We in the US/EU ignored it then because we benefited from it, but now it's coming back to bite us because these multinational corporations and their controlling funders are now more powerful than governments and have quite a few in their pockets. World domination won't come through the flawed UN, but instead through the "invisible hand" that controls and dominates numerous governments across the globe into doing it's bidding.

I don't understand what this has to do with Capitalism. Can you describe some other type of economy that would not result in the same outcome? The real problem is that efficiency in cattle ranching is at odds with your sense of decent living conditions for these animals. Any system that rewards efficiency and does not adequately protect the animals will have this outcome. The solution is to regulate how animals are treated and their living conditions. Or, at the very least, have a certification and lab

When the first superbug from these farms crosses species, strikes the human population, and kills millions via the food chain in the form of disease or starvation, the problem with moral-free, unabashed capitalism will probably clear itself up pretty quickly - for better or worse.

Food Inc [foodincmovie.com] I watched it last year and made the switch to eating about 95% organic ever since. I tell people we are in the FOOD MATRIX right now, everyone is, when I go to a normal grocery store now all I see are the green 1 and 0s of the matrix code on the isle shelves, except instead of 1s and 0s they are processed corn, soy, and wheat lol. If people only knew, or cared to know. Watch this movie and you will know some of it, its sad, but you can help change it. Sadly it takes a long time as the mass mar

Amazingly enough, Prince Charles has actually said a few things over the years that are actually quite smart. The idea that towns will function better if there's a well-defined center is sound. The idea that people prefer buildings to look good, as well as function well, is obvious. In this particular debate, he has been slammed on all sides but again appears to have made some valid points - it is possible to farm economically AND be ecologically sound. The two do not have to be in conflict.

This whole scene with the huge feedlots is a ripoff for the consumer and the end user eater..and for us small farmers. We only have a hand full of big packers in the US. Small farmers are forced to sell their feeder cattle at auction, because it is SO difficult to market full size eatin cows locally. It's possible, but mostly it just sucks, almost impossible People just don't have full size freezers anymore where they can fit a "side" or half a cow. So, we are forced to sell the cows at a lower weight, typically around 500-600 lbs at auction, for a suck ass cheap price, so the very few corporate buyers get them and ship them to the feedlots where they are fattened up like you describe in medium rank conditions. They have basically a ripoff cartel that sets prices. We as small farmers don't make much at all, most of the loot is made upstream at the packers and then the shippers, then with the wall street speculators who make a *ton* for doing nothing at all except being leeches. That $8.99 1lb ribeye you are eating we got paid around a buck for...maybe

If more people would buy locally, we could change this. Our cows are grass fed and happy, plenty of room to move around, shade, all of that. What happens after the auction is out of our hands. You as consumers can change this, buy local, spend the money and get a decent sized freezer, you will get much cheaper beef and better quality.

2) transfer livestock to condensed acre-sized feed lots with barely enough room for animals to move3) pipe sewage to huge waste ponds, then spew it out onto open ground. To hell with the neighbors who complain about the smell4) feed livestock said antibiotics to increase production.5) slaughter livestock, grind up by products, then feed to other livestock.5) profit!

<quote>5) slaughter livestock, grind up by products, then feed to other livestock.</quote>That bit also happens unhygienically - very often the animal feces and bacteria get splattered everywhere contaminating the meat.

Then the consumers are told to cook everything properly, and if stuff happens, it's the consumer's fault, not agribusiness fault...

I've heard of a case where they dunk all the chicken in the same water after removing the feathers, and naturally that mixes and spreads all the bacte

3) pipe sewage to huge waste ponds, then spew it out onto open ground. To hell with the neighbors who complain about the smell

It's not a waste pond, it's 100% all natural fertilizer storage the type of which has been in use since humanity began farming, including by those family farms you imagine were run so differently. The alternative is to spread artificial petroleum based fertilizer on everything or not be able to farm the same field after about 10 years. So yeah, to hell with the neighbors who complain about the smell, they don't know what they're talking about.

The usual anti-biotics we used was from a Pfizer product labeled LA-200 and it is expensive at around $140 every 5-ounces: about 1/4 ounce is used for a 350lb cow when we find one with a puncture wound or laceration. I've talked with smaller family farms on what they use on their animals to prevent infections and fight infections and it's always been a simple herbal formula consisting of crushed garlic mixed with crushed black walnut and applied as a paste that is more effective than Pfizer LA-200. Ive tried this same organic mix on fungal infections on my forearms and llower legs and it works better than the expensive tube pastes from convenience stores.

What I find unsettling about LA-200 is that many of the cowboys equally take a smaller dosage by the same needle (before using on the cows though) because it's practically the same as what they would've been given from an HMO but much less expense.

Think about all the people who don't get vaccines for one reason or another (Jenny McCarthy's hysteria for example). While the low-dose antibiotics are making the bugs stronger, they kill off the weak and infirm of our population, making the overall herd that much stronger.

I am not a vegetarian, but we need to reduce our meat consumption. I'll never be a vegetarian, I'm too fond of my Sicilian-American culinary traditions, but two things need to happen: First, we need to reduce the amount of meat we consume, and we need to consume better meat when we do. This diet that America has of eating a big bucket of meat and cheese from Denny's is just ridiculous, and it's killing us on multiple fronts.

I try to follow a basic plan: Vegan (or Vegetarian) before 6pm. I try and make sure the meat I do eat for dinner is high quality. I pay a little extra for it, but the savings throughout the day balance out. There are other types of diets that would be great for reducing meat consumption without any of us thinking we're suddenly living off of soy and wheat germ. Eating smaller portions of meat, but still using it for flavoring, for instance. Even just getting the idea in our heads that we shouldn't eat meat for every single meal.

Factory farming has got to go, it's horrible on so many fronts. I'm not a foodie, and I don't have vegan super powers, and I recognize that people are on a budget, and can't shop for organic at whole foods (hell, I can't afford to, and I have a decent job). But we have to figure some kind of practical way forward, because we can't keep packing animals in to dark crates, standing in their own filth and pumping them full of drugs and then call that dinner.

People need to be educated n how much meat they need a day. It's not really that much.

Factory farming is a very efficient way to feed a lot of people. It does not, and can not. go away. That doesn't mean it can't be improved.

'Organic' food is a marketing scam. In most cases its more harmful, in the best cases its more expensive for less food.Meaning if you used to pay 25 cents for and apple, and organic apples will be 35 cents, and 20% smaller then the 25 cents apples and still be using the SAME chemicals.

Unfortunately, the problem is not in a particular case(s) of misuse, but in the generally low professionalism of medical professionals.

For example, here in Canada it has become increasingly difficult to get an antibiotic prescription. Doctors fight tooth and nail when it comes to antibiotics, and as a result, a lot of people get treated late.

I think the situation is best described by an old russian proverb: Make a fool pray, and he'll crack his forehead.

It will be a long time before Congress acts, if ever.
But you can protect yourself and make things better by buying meat from "organically" raised animals: animals that were raised without antibiotics and without having been raised in factory farms. Note that the "organic" label itself may be misleading depending on what you are and who uses it, so check more carefully what it means for that particular product (the label usually says it if they did go through the trouble of doing the right thing).
You sh

Most places in the country have Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, and it well behooves one to look into these.

I get about 15-25lbs of fresh produce, locally grown by a group of Amish farmers, every week - and it costs me about $15/wk and a half hour on Saturday running up to the local farmer's market to pick it up. Some places have the same kind of thing for grass-fed beef and (genuinely) free range chicken, and occasionally pork too.

Seriously, researchers have warned for years that using antibiotics in this way is a bad idea. It is also true for human patients, distributing antibiotics like candies tends to have the same effect. People use them too often or do not complete the treatment and the strongest bugs get selected and can happily repopulate an environment now void of competition.

The summary gets one thing wrong. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are not stronger than those that are nor antibiotic resistant. As a matter of fact they are weaker. Generally, the way that bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics is by shutting down the cellular mechanism that the antibiotic uses to get into the cell. However, that cellular mechanism serves a useful function in the cell (usually to bring nutrients into the bacterial cell). When antibiotic resistant bacteria are in an environment without antibiotics they generally die off over a relatively short time-span. This is why currently most infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria occur in hospitals.
That being said, excessive use of antibiotics is still a bad thing.

Conventional wisdom agrees with you, but the evidence does not. Denmark has had a ban on growth promoting antibiotics for almost a decade now, with the rest of the EU having followed suit only a couple of years later. Several antibiotics that have been approved for use the US were never approved for use in the EU for agriculture. However, they were approved for use in humans. DANMAP is the danish antibiotic use and resistance tracking program that was developed to ensure compliance and track the ban's effect. I can't remember off the top of my head, but for several of those antibiotics that were never approved for animals, but were in humans, the resistance levels are higher in Denmark, then they are in the US where agriculture has been using them alongside human medicine. It appears as though many antibiotic resistance genes have no negative value in the absence of selective pressure, which goes a long way toward explaining the generally higher resistance levels in some EU member nations relative to the US.

This is a very important and complex issue, and FUD articles like the IBTimes one are not helpful. They stir up the general populace to act without considering the evidence that already exists. The EU ban has not been effective at its stated goal of reducing resistance prevalence in the human population. I think that a ban that excludes the nursery phase would be more appropriate if not a complete repeal of the ban. But that's just based on my own interpretation of the scientific literature (as opposed to the financial literature, or populist literature). You can agree with me or not, it won't affect my research.

The summary gets one thing wrong. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are not stronger than those that are nor antibiotic resistant. As a matter of fact they are weaker. Generally, the way that bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics is by shutting down the cellular mechanism that the antibiotic uses to get into the cell. However, that cellular mechanism serves a useful function in the cell (usually to bring nutrients into the bacterial cell). When antibiotic resistant bacteria are in an environment without antibiotics they generally die off over a relatively short time-span.

Eh, "-1 Oversimplified".

Loss-of-function or alterations of form are indeed one of of the possible mechanisms, and tends to be the more easily-evolved type, so you will often see those appear (and disappear) the fastest. However, occasionally you see mutations that are "free" to the bug, and represent a genuine evolutionary advance that will stick around, possibly forever.

1) the animals use a very low, non therapeutic dose, most of which is lost in their waste.2) there isn't any good evidence that this causes superbugs. Yes, intuitively it seems so, and there may be a mechanisim in place, and it really wouldn't surprise anyone if this turned out to be the case, but no study backs any of that up.3) it is now that the over use of therapeutic doses causes this issue.4) not all bugs become superbugs5) superbug doesn't mean more virulent.

Now:We need to understand the precise mechanism on how the antibiotics work for growth. The exact chemical reaction. Then we can produce more specific drugs.

We should be using the Swedish model. Slightly less product per animal. I I don't think a 1% increase in meat costs is going to be a big deal to any individual persons budget

1) This is precisely the "best" possible way to induce antibiotic resistance. You are basically selecting out the bacteria which are able to tolerate low doses of antibiotic, which are then able to outcompete their more susceptible brethren. The result is the "normal" gut flora of these farm animals now has a built in resistance to that particular antibiotic.
2) The gut flora of these animals is excreted in waste. The mechanisms by which super bugs are created is through transmission of plasmids, bacterioph

This is not a bad example of the superstitious fallacy that market forces fix everything, and we should deregulate all markets because regulations only get in the way, blah blah blah. Feedlots exist because in the short term they are by far most efficient from the strict standpoint of profitability. They are monstrously inefficient overall because they externalize the costs of waste disposal, coliform contamination of meat, feed costs (corn, the favorite animal feed, is subsidized), high fat-content in the resulting meat (due to the use of corn instead of forage), etc. The public must bear these costs so that meat producers can enjoy a profitable business. The power of the market is largely a myth that exists mainly in academic discussions rather than in real life.

is the International Business Times an authority on anything. I'd never even heard from them before today.

Additionally, as someone with a doctorate in animal science and a researcher in the field, I have to say that the case against animal agriculture is overstated. No one will argue that they don't contribute, but the relative importance of antibiotic use in animals (that less than 1% of the population ever come into contact with while they are alive) relative to that of rampant, large-dose, antibiotic abuses in hospitals (You know where all of those sick people hang out, transferring infections back and forth) has never been ascertained empirically.

First, the vast majority of the bacterial species that live in livestock are not capable of living in people. Therefore, the rate of resistance transfer from animal bacteria to human bacteria is relatively low. Evidence exists that these species can, and do transfer resistance gene between eachother. However, the majority of the evidence is "Resistance gene A is present in pig bacteria and human bacteria, and genes are essentially identical, therefore the gene came from animals!" This of course, completely ignores the possiblity that the gene arose to prominence in the human population and then was transferred to a pig via a farm worker that was a carrier. Talk about placing the cart in front of horse.

Second, low levels of antibiotic use in the swine industry is usually only during the first month after weaning. Pigs are weaned at between 18 and 24 days on most farms in order to prevent the sow (aka "Mom") from transmitting certain diseases to the piglets that have little effect on adult animals, but can kill piglets very easily. At this age the maternal antibodies from the colostrum are starting to wear off, but the piglets own acquired immune system is not completely up to the task. Therefore the antibiotics buy the piglets time by reducing the overall microbial load in the intestine, and coincidentally increasing the efficiency of feed utilization (which is good for the environment). Many farms then discontinue the use of prophylactic, or growth promoting antibiotics because antibiotics cost money and feed costs can account for 60-70% of total production overhead. Expensive feed can drive you out of business in a hurry.

Third, to all those bragging about being from the EU, where there is a total ban on prophylactic antibiotics a word of caution. The total amount of antibiotics used in EU agriculture is not actually lower than it was before the ban. The difference is that instead of giving antibiotics to prevent infection, and improve production they are now given to tread disease outbreaks that wouldn't of otherwise happened and to try and minimize reductions in production. Also, the antibiotics of most relevance to human medicine are not routinely used for growth promotion, but they are used to treat disease outbreaks. So, the total tonnage of antibiotics being administered has not really gone down (it did until they banned them in the nursery which was the last phase of the ban), and the antibiotics being used are MORE likely to also be used in human medicine. Bravo, talk about unintended consequences!

Finally, I fail to see how this made the front page here. It is not the usual fare of geek (no computers anywhere), it is not actually news (this controversy has been around for at least a decade), this article contributed nothing new to the discussion (restates already rampant FUD), and the IBTimes are not exactly the NYTimes or LATimes. The only thing I can see in its favor is that it lets the ignorant "Organic" group say I told you so without any real technical points for those few of us in the field to respond to. The original article is link-bait, plain and simple and/. fell for it.

You bring up some valid points and your insight is an appreciated antidote to a poorly executed article.

But (putting GM feed aside), there remains one big aspect about factory farms I cannot get past...

Are the animals experiencing a quality of life which doesn't include standing around in shit?

Then they are no longer animals. They are active meat cultures. They may not be stressed, but I know plenty of fat idiots who are generally not stressed either and their lives are also pathetic compared to free rang

Most of my recent experience is with pigs, and broiler chickens, but I did work on a couple of small to medium sized dairies as an undergraduate. On intensive dairies, the cows live in a free stall barn usually. They consist of 1 or 2 ally's flanked by rows of stalls. The stalls are elevated about a foot or 2 above the floor, are padded (ground up tires cover with thick canvas and fresh wood shavings replaced periodically), and allow the cows to comfortably lie down without laying in shit. On one wall i

Anyhow, afaik cows and such don't get antibotics for no reason over here in Sweden. Sure if they get sick (I don't know how that affect slaughter though, don't know if you sell the meat if they are on drugs.)

So it's an american (and most likely others) thing.

May be more needed in really small boxes where you can't move at all and everyone is closer to eachother and so on.

You vegetarians want to save the animals, but we carnivores are doing our part to cut down on this superbug problem. If we listened to you vegetarians, these animal farms would be a huge drain on the economy, raising animals for no practical use, and the animal population would spiral out of control. Stop shifting the blame and take responsibility to this disaster you're creating.

What's happened in our country (world...) is pretty simple. Religion and spirituality is a form of science: we observe things, we attribute them to hypothesis. Thus people imagine gods and spirits to control the various functions of the world. Eventually science evolves to explore the physical world as a set of causes and effects, which improves understanding of spiritual issues (meditation etc) and physical issue, but people still

Thus goes morality, and with it honor and civility; people don't believe in gods OR any such thing as karma or spiritual health, so they're disinclined to put themselves at risk for someone else since there's no profit in it.

People who do believe in gods or karma are as egotistical as the others, their profit is a supposed reward in an after-life.

Only people who believe death is a real end and yet help others are really unselfish.

And to those that think a belief in God automatically makes you a "good" perso

Yeah, here's a little hint: People blindly doing anything without considering the long-term consequences will likely fuck shit up. At least science provides us with the necessary tools to predict and evaluate those consequences.

I mean, you don't *really* think this whole "livestock superbug" thing is suddenly a new, entirely unpredicted discovery, do you?

If my dog gets sick I need a vet to get antibiotics, I can't just go buy them OTC can I?

Yes, in north america and europe but I was in China a few years ago and they sold pretty strong antibiotics OTC. They just recently stopped doing that somewhat; now the person behind the counter has to listen to you list your symptoms first and write a prescription on the spot. Everyone there keeps plenty of antibiotics in stock at home and will take it for a day or two when they have a fever. They're creatin